ORIGINAL PAPER Intrapersonal and Ecodevelopmental Factors Associated with Smoking in Hispanic Adolescents Barbara Lopez • Shi Huang • Wei Wang • Guillermo Prado • C. Hendricks Brown • Guang Zeng • Kathryn Flavin • Hilda Pantin Published online: 12 November 2009 Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009 Abstract We examined how relationships among intra- personal (i.e., attitudes and beliefs about smoking) and ecodevelopmental (i.e., family, school, and peer) factors influence risk for lifetime smoking in immigrant Hispanic adolescents. Our sample was comprised of 223 immigrant Hispanic adolescents and their families and was drawn from 3 middle schools in a single school district. Data collected is a result of adolescent and parent completed questionnaires as well as county school data (i.e., GPA, teacher reported effort and conduct, absences). Results indicated only poor school functioning, peer smoking, and lack of perceived harm concerning smoking were directly related to adolescent lifetime smoking. Poor school func- tioning and peer smoking mediated the relationship between family functioning and adolescent smoking. Implications of these results for the design of smoking preventive interventions for immigrant Hispanic adoles- cents are discussed. Keywords Hispanic Á Smoking Á Adolescents Á Peer smoking Á School functioning Introduction Smoking has been found to increase risk for several life threatening diseases including cancer and cardiovascular disease (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2003, 2004). It is estimated that approximately 6.3 million youth alive today will die from smoking-related diseases (Heinrich 2003). The negative consequences of smoking can be seen across race and ethnicity. Among Hispanics in the United States (US) cardiovascular disease (28.6%) and cancer (19.7%) are the two leading causes of death (American Heart Association 2006). These alarming sta- tistics have led to the development of interventions focused on preventing smoking in adolescence. Preventive interventions have generally focused on adolescents due to the high prevalence of smoking initia- tion and smoking in general during this age period (Hein- rich 2003). Current cigarette smoking rates increase steadily in adolescence and by the end of high school one- fifth of youth are current smokers (Johnston et al. 2008). Among Hispanics, the prevalence of smoking has been shown to increase as a function of immigration status (Gordon-Larsen et al. 2003; Landrine et al. 1994; Unger et al. 2000) and conduct problems (Barnes et al. 2005). First generation Hispanics generally have a lower preva- lence of smoking than second generation Hispanics irre- spective of country of origin (Gordon-Larsen et al. 2003). There are several factors that have been found to be associated with smoking in adolescence and have been targeted during preventive interventions. These factors can be organized into intrapersonal (e.g., attitudes and beliefs B. Lopez (&) Cardiovascular Division, University of Miami, Miller School of Medicine, Miami, FL 33136, USA e-mail: Blopez21@bellsouth.net S. Huang Á G. Prado Á C. H. Brown Á K. Flavin Á H. Pantin Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University of Miami, Miami, FL, USA W. Wang Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA G. Zeng Department of Educational Administration and Research, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, Corpus Christi, TX, USA 123 J Child Fam Stud (2010) 19:492–503 DOI 10.1007/s10826-009-9321-7